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Friday, November 9, 2012

The Plutonian - Voices - Niel Jacoby

Panel 1: Long shot of the young(6/7-ish) PLUTONIAN walking off to school. From the look on his face, he doesn't have a care in the world, though he has a bit of a thousand-yard stare.

SOUND BUBBLES(faint, unconnected to anybody, these are random sounds Plutonian is hearing as he goes through his life):

--3, 2, 1. TAKE THE SHOT.

HOUSTON, WE H--

BYE, MOM!

-EAAAAGH!

-CE DAY AT WORK, HONEY.

-MEBODY CALL AN AMB--

-GRKKK-GUH-GRUUUUK-GHHH-

there are more, but since the cloud of sound bubbles should fade out around the edges, they should be somewhat unreadable, but they should seem like there's text in them.

Caption: JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE LIFE OF

BOYTONIAN!(large, stands out): THE ADVENTURES OF THE PLUTONIAN WHEN HE WAS A BOY!

Caption: THE PLUTONIAN LEARNED EARLY IN HIS DEVELOPMENT TO SHUT OUT THE COUNTLESS NOISES HE HEARD DUE TO HIS PLUTONI-HEARING!

Panel 2: The young Plutonian is walking onto the bus.

SOUND BUBBLES(same as in panel 1):

SAY, DID YOU HEAR ABOUT--

-EAL'S DONE. DROP THE MO--

WELL, I HEARD--

--HAS COME TO SEAL MY DOOM!

NOBODY MOVE, NOBODY GE--

Caption: YES, HIS PLUTONI-HEARING CAN HEAR SOUNDS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD! BUT FOR ALL HIS VIRTUES, THE PLUTONIAN IS JUST ONE MAN--OR ONE BOY!

Panel 3: the Plutonian sitting on the bus next to another child. Plutonian has the same thousand-yard stare from panel 1, and the other child is visibly skeeved.

SOUND BUBBLES(same as in panel 1):

--AN OMEN! I SHALL--

--YEAR DID THE FI--

--w'nafh Cthulhu R'lye--

--COW GOES-

Caption: YES, EVEN WITH HIS PLUTONI-POWERS, THERE'S NO WAY THE PLUTONIAN COULD DEAL WITH ALL THE SUFFERING HE HEARS ON A DAILY BASIS, AND HE KNOWS THAT EVEN AS HE HEARS IT, THE SOUNDS ARE FROM SECONDS, EVEN MINUTES, AGO--IN MOST CASES, TOO LATE!

5 comments:

I like the concept, and the use of the 'sound bubbles' makes it visually interesting.

However the tone felt a bit disjointed. The panel 1 captions seem a little fun and light hearted with the Adventures of Boytonian stuff, then by panel 3. we have this very stern and serious look at the complex feeling he has to deal 'cus of his powers.

Amusing Silver Age style take on a serious character. I like some of the sound balloons, especially the Cthulhu one, and the reminder from Irredeemable that super-hearing (or "Plutoni-hearing") is useless when you factor in the speed of sound.

I really dig the switch up from the happy-go-lucky intro caption boxes to the slow discovery that things aren't quite as warm and fuzzy as they seem. It's kind of a horrifying concept, but the cavalier way that the caption books misunderstand what's going on is what makes this so good in my mind.

I have to ask...the snippets of dialogue, where are they from? Are they from other TB scripts?

I only mention it as some of the snippets seemed familiar. I seem to recall a Superman comic where he was above the Earth listening to chatter below. The writer (whose name escapes me) used dialogue snippets from all of that months DC titles in the tailless balloons.

"--has come to seal my doom!" is from an old superman comic Brendan McCarthy used in a kind-of-sort-of collage thing in his issue of SOLO, "--an omen! I shall--" is from the moment Bruce Wayne became the Batman, and "--w'nafh Cthulhu R'lye-- " is from HP Lovecraft, in particular "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" or in English "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.", the phrase Cthulhu's followers chant in The Call Of Cthulhu.

I really like that idea of using snippets of dialogue from past TB strips, and wish I had done that. And that Superman trick is definitely nifty.